I heard that it supposedly can run Sims 3 pretty well once it can recognize it, but if there's nothing I can do it'd suck for me to just have to uninstall everything after all that effort.

The game will run on your hardware set. It's the "pretty well" part that is in question and open to different interpretations and sets of expectations.

Perhaps you could ask those who made this statement, where you heard it from, what experiences they have had with TS3 on Iris XE integrated and what limitations they may have found, with the understanding that practically no two players approach this game with exactly the same play styles and expectations in mind.

Well I was kinda hoping to find an answer here There is this forum post that mentions it, but I'm not tech savvy with editing files. At most I added it to Intel's Graphic Command Center, but I didn't have any notable changes in the heat nor the DeviceConfig.log changing.

To the player marking my responses as Unhelpful -- that's fine. I would like to be corrected when I give poor advice, but just the branding as such with no further input doesn't really accomplish anything positive. Do you have anything to add based on your experiences or those of other players with this hardware set that you would like to share?

If I could figure out how to properly get the game to recognize my graphics card, it might not actually overheat as much since it wouldn't be working with what it thinks is a low rated card I think. I'm kinda lost on trying to add it to the files though since the game refused to load and crashed last time I tried.

I tried again with the provided GraphicsCards.sgr and GraphicsRules.sgr from this post on Carl's Sims 4 Guide site, I even opened them up to double check that my graphics card is listed in there and it is, but the game just doesn't open and produces a crash log. I even tried copying and pasting the new stuff into the current GraphicsCards.sgr and GraphicsRules.sgr, but the same thing happens. The files are screwed up and no one seems to have noticed I don't know how to properly fix this or add them to my files. Unless Sims 3 just can't ever recognize and run with Intel(R) Iris(R) Xe Graphics at all and I'm wasting my time trying.

I use those files and have no problems with them.

Any time I need my game to recognize a new graphics card, I use the following tutorial. I can't speak about about the files people have downloaded as I've never used them.

*OUTDATED* ULTIMATE SIMS 3 FIX GUIDE 💫 (2021)

https://youtu.be/p-uBFKOen-4?feature=shared&t=114

I know this says outdated, but the process is the same. That is not the 'outdated' part of the video.

So the video guide says if I have Intel that I don't need to touch GraphicsRules.sgr at all, just GraphicsCards.sgr. Easier to follow, it now says Found: 1, Matched: 1
Though watching further at 13:17, says Intel Integrated Graphics users don't need to mess with GraphicsRules.sgr if it says Matched: 1, which is weird because this EA Forums outright says the reason why the GPU is rating it as 1 is because unless it is specified it will be rated low. Which is it? Do I try editing GraphicsRules.sgr for Intel(R) Iris(R) Xe Graphics or not?

EDIT: Scratch that last part, I checked out the updated video out of curiosity and I tried out the Sims 3 GPU Add-on Support tool on Nexus mods. Now my GPU rating changed and got bumped up to 3 along with everything else such as Texture Memory better than 1 I suppose, but I'm happy (apparently identifies my card as "Mobile TigerLake GT2"). The default settings for my card put them around the medium range, but I only ever keep 2 options on high while everything else is low/off so I can focus on playing, and the game is running pretty smoothly.
Now I can focus on finally going through and installing all of my old my CC and playing the game

I'm glad you found the videos useful and that you're now able to to play.

That being said, despite the bump for GPU, I would still take the following advice as a word of caution. I know you said you keep things on low / off, but nobody wants anybodies computer to fry. The game should be fun rather than a source of stress.

Yeah I understand. I lost a hard drive to overheating once when I was younger and I've tried to keep my devices cool and clean ever since
I keep a cooling pad under the laptop so it doesn't overheat and it's on a stand to allow air flow. The side vent gets hot, but it's hard for me to judge how hot is too much (someone checked it for me and it wasn't that hot around 73.) I've played other games and they've lasted for quite a bit, only 1 crashed a few times, but that was mostly because I had tried upping that game's FPS to 60. I can get Sims 3 up to 60 FPS and it works really well, but I set it to 30 for now out of caution (even at that rate, it runs better than my old computer)
Of course this isn't counting all of the CC I've had in both the Mods folder and Launcher, but I'm going to go through it all and removing what I don't need anymore and reorganizing it.

Here's my settings after the graphics card fix. Left is default if I click the button, right is the settings I'm choosing to go with.